"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere."
--G.K. Chesterton
"The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred.../Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as much as you."
--Walt Whitman
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An event held this past weekend in Austria suggests that none of life's milestones are safe from commercial exploitation. From BBC News:
Austria is to host the world's first "divorce fair" this month, aimed at helping couples untie the knot as painlessly as possible.
The event, taking place in Vienna, then Linz and Graz, will allow would-be divorcees to consult lawyers about their rights and seek advice.
The divorce rate in Austria hit an all time high of 50% in 2006, with 66% of marriages in Vienna ending in divorce.
The two-day fair is being held under the motto "New beginning"....
Up to 20 exhibitors have registered so far, not only lawyers and mediators, but also estate agents, life-crisis experts, private detective firms and DNA laboratories offering paternity tests.
One company will offer therapeutic package holidays for newly divorced people.
There will also be a series of lectures on subjects like how divorce affects children and coping as a single parent.
I say, why stop there? How about divorce registries at Sharper Image (for men) and Godiva (for women)? Divorcee "coming-out" parties? (Watch for a spin-off from MTV's "My Super Sweet 16".) Once the marketers start to see family breakup as a brand-able lifestyle niche, we're in big trouble.
10/30/2007 3:11 PM
Alegria Imperial wrote:
We are in big trouble! And viewing the'tube', here's what I 'saw'
Scars
buried crosses mark the grave of my grief, swags of colored pelts my days had shed.
on crest of foam the sun floated my dreams rising to splinter on sand. i picked shreds on the loam of my waking.
waves heaved but on my breath died, heaps of air too leaden for flying. i craved for sleep blankness promised.
the sea washed the sky, its blueness sank to my cheeks. i wore the dawn,a bruised mask.
who read my hand stole inscriptions of secrets, sighs whorled in space: betrayal stripped me raw
my flesh, layers of omissions. i leave ribbons of sin plastered on corners where i waited, grieving. Reply to this
11/2/2007 6:13 PMSteve wrote:
I read this post and thought of ancient Rome, where divorce was relatively common. I wondered if they also made a big deal (and thus commercial splash) out of divorce as well as out of weddings. The site http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/ATLAS_EN/html/history_of_marriage_in_western.html discusses marriage in Roman history, and contains the following sentence which seems to hint at what I mean. "Members of the upper classes usually preferred an elaborate ceremony and thus married by confarreatio in front of ten witnesses and a priest. In the case of a divorce, another great ceremony was required." Certainly there would have been caterers, experts who arranged the ceremonies, and lots of money to be made.
So we've been down this road before - possibly many times. Of course that's no reason why we should hasten there - after all, parallels between Rome and modern Western Civ (and our eventual downfall) are common. The Church cautions against imitating or condoning the vices of the saints; certainly we don't want to imitate the vices of Rome. Reply to this
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